


The Man You Think I Am

by Archangel67



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 7x17, Broken!Cas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-24
Updated: 2012-03-24
Packaged: 2017-11-02 10:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archangel67/pseuds/Archangel67
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean tells Sam that they have to leave Castiel behind, but he goes back to the hospital...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Man You Think I Am

Sam must have thought that he was a monster.

Well, you know what? Screw that. His brother should have known him better than that, but Sammy had been through a lot and as they left the hospital, he wasn’t going to get into the details of just what was going through his mind. Sam didn’t know. He just didn’t… Seeing Cas there, with a home, with a goddamn  _wife_? The last time he had felt pain like that, he had been strung up on Alistair’s rack.

“Dean? Dean, stop.” His back was to his brother and he was already walking away. There was no way that he was going to let someone who had just been dealing with having Lucifer doing a two-step inside of his skull for the past week know that he was hurting. His pain seemed pretty fucking trivial next to what Sam had been through.

“No,” he grunted shortly. “We’re getting out of here. We’ve got shit to take care of.”

“You can’t be serious. He  _saved_  me, Dean.” Sam reached out in a helpless attempt to turn the green eyed man around, but he didn’t have the strength. He was left grasping at his brother’s jacket as it slipped from his fingers.

 

“Trust me. You? You need to sleep. And me? There are lose ends to tie up. We’re going to find a motel with a bed clean enough for you to sleep in for the next forty eight hours and I need to make some calls. About Frank.” They had been in the midst of trying to figure out what had happened to their temporary go-to guy when Sam had gotten into his accident. Dean figured that it had been Leviathan but now that demons were cropping up again? Who knew.

…Dean hated to use Frank as his excuse, but it would keep them close.

Once they had a room, Sam was out within minutes. Forcing his brother to sit, to lay, to close his completely blood-shot eyes did the trick. After being awake for days on end, there was no other choice. Even after Cas had touched him, done…. whatever it was he had managed to do… Sammy was weak. Nerves shot, strength gone. It would take time for him to recover physically, even if his mind was in the clear.

For a while, Dean sat at his bedside, hand resting on the younger man’s shoulder. He wished that he could have felt more relief, but the fear he had felt for Sam had been transferred - literally - to Cas. Sighing, he straightened himself up and snatched the keys from the bedside table. “Don’t you go anywhere,” he said with a mirthless twitch of a smile.

Why did it always have to be one or the other? Why did he always have to choose?

The chart outside of the door read Emanuel, of course. Not that Emanuel existed any longer. The moment that Cas had remembered, that short lived persona had been shattered. What would happen to Daphne? You know something… Dean didn’t care. He really,  _really_  didn’t care right now. Castiel had wandered into her life so would she be that surprised when he wandered right back out?

Fuck. Who married somebody they found naked in the woods beside a reservoir, anyway? Then again… who developed feelings for an  _angel_  that he couldn’t hold a civil conversation with half the time? Seeing that woman had made Dean feel inexplicably guilty. Cas had been happy, or something like happy. Blissful ignorance.

That was more than he had ever been able to offer the blue eyed man.

God… damn it.

Cas hadn’t moved. He hadn’t budged an inch in the few hours since they had left. He was still sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, shoulders stiff, eyes blank and staring across the room into nothing. Dean closed the door behind him, swallowing as he felt a hard lump of emotion pushing up, like his heart was trying to crawl up into his throat and strangle him.

Even when he pulled the chair out from the desk and slid it around, Cas didn’t so much as flinch or even breathe. Dean sat, glancing self consciously back toward the door before he scooted closer and took Castiel’s hands in his own, squeezing them.

“…Look at me,” he begged. “Please look at me, Cas.”

He didn’t and he wouldn’t. Blue eyes were glazed over. He was there physically but his mind was somewhere else entirely. The hunter couldn’t even begin to imagine how Cas was dealing with what he had taken from Sam. It was as if he had leeched the anguish straight out of his brother’s soul and taken it into his own… but angel’s didn’t have souls. So what was it doing? Tearing apart his Grace?

The thought of it dropped like a lead weight in Dean’s stomach.

“Come on, man. What you did for Sam? I… I can’t thank you enough for that. I mean it. We’re gonna find a way to help you. I promise.” He searched the other man’s eyes, but they were just as empty. Dropping the angel’s hands, his own came up to cover his mouth as he took a shuddering breath. “You don’t even know I’m here, do you?”

Cas blinked once. No response.

Dean realized that he was biting the inside of his lip when he tasted copper on his tongue. There was no rectifying this. Not right now. Not when he didn’t have a clue what he was doing or how to do it. Cas was going to be locked up in this mental ward until they found a way to put him back together again. It hadn’t been his intention to make Castiel the panacea to cure Sam… but it was too late now.

Why did he always have to choose?

“I wont leave you here. I won’t. You’re not alone, Cas.” It wasn’t something that he could have controlled, even if he had wanted to. His hands went to either side of the angel’s face as he leaned in, his lips pressing firmly against Castiel’s forehead, closing his eyes to fight back feelings he wasn’t yet willing to give into. “You  _hear_  me? I’m right here with you.”


End file.
